"How Google killed the longtail" - 'long tail' means the less popular search results for less common keywords and keyphrases

What is the "long tail"? (link goes to the wikipedia entry, which is an okay place to start)

Well, for about the past 5 years, more and more people with pages looking for search engine traffic have been pushed out of the serps (Search Engine Results Page - thats the page of listings you see when you search for something at a search engine like google) for the best keywords. Google's policies have created a group of winning sites and a much larger droup of losing sites, and the losing sites in the competition had to give up trying for the best keywords and instead try to get the less common keywords in the "long tail".

The past 2 years tho even the longtail is becoming less and less important, and here's an interesting infographic that starts to explain why.

A Look at How Longtail Content Lost Its Edge

"Over the years Google has moved to consolidate search volume against fewer keywords (which are easier to match ads against) and they have inserted their own vertical listings in their search results. The result is that the longtail has become far less profitable for many publishers."

Click this graphic to go to the original page and view full size.